Knives in Dead Flesh
by Harukami
Summary: Hardin dreams and attempts to understand Sydney's connection to the dead.


Knives in Dead Flesh - a Vagrant Story fanfic by Harukami  
  
  
~Flesh parting like sordid waves of blackened tar-water. Blood moving sluggishly from wounds that were little more than tattered banners of grey flesh, waving in the wind, empty, deflated of life. A body moving to completion, leasurely, without excitement, claws hooked like daggers in over-ripe skin, ready to burst with decay.  
  
Eyes opened, a chill, dead, ice-blue with a spark in them that was unrelated to the death that surrounded them like a battlefield. A spark of fire, hellfire or perhaps a lust that was unapparent in the leasurely movement of body joined to body.  
  
He could not move with the motion. He lay, gray-skinned, unbreathing, flesh like torn paper under knives, as he was fucked.  
  
He was loved, loved, loved.~  
  
Hardin woke with a start, and took a moment to realize he had woken. He was never completely comfortable in Lea Monde without Sydney there, particularly if there was an innocent nearby. It seemed sometimes as if the dead were jealous, and the child --  
  
Drawing sluggish body to his feet, he stumbled over to check on the child.  
  
Joshua slept, still under the effects of magic, short hair tousled around his young face, a flush of health high up in his cheeks, blond eyelashes trembling like butterflies on his cheekbones. He was crumpled as if dead, but his whole body moved with the effort of peaceful sleep.  
  
Familiar, that face. It was hard to see, sometimes, but so familiar. If Sydney were ever a child, it would have been a child like this. Sydney could never have been a child. He had no thought of innocence about him, no sense that purity had ever been around him. Grace, yes. Beauty, yes. Whatever Sydney saw in dreams was no innocent child's fantasy, and could never have been.  
  
~Flesh like living decay crumbling, pussing when he reached out to touch, spreading decay and a knowledge of death through his own hands. The dead flesh inside him pulsed, something fierce and violent and living, for once, and a moan ripped free from lips -- high, sharp, unable to belong to a grown man. He could not be capable of taking pleasure from dead flesh like this, in a body dead from youth. His back arched.~  
  
Hardin shook himself when he realized that his fingers were leaving marks on the child's face as he had zoned out, caught up again by the dream.   
  
Yet the dream was changing. It had been him, before, and Sydney, and now, he knew not who had been who in the dream as it picked him up again.  
  
Uncertain, almost afraid of himself, he backed away from the innocent and sat against a wall, trying his warrior's breathing patterns to calm himself. Inhale. Exhale. Inh-  
  
~ale. Exhale. Breath stuttering out like panic, like tears muffled into a pillow when the world gave up what it was supposed to be and began to resolve itself into a sickly mess of darkness and chaos and the scent of decaying flesh and other peoples minds, touching his own and leaving grease-stains behind like hands that had been into the turkey before it was fully cooked.  
  
But that was not grease, then, it was blood, and he was stained, stained, stained with premature hands.   
  
With dead flesh cracking open inside him to spurt hot, decaying life while he writhed, unprepared, uninviting, crying out not for the feeling but for arms to catch him as he fell, for a figure that danced in the fire of life hidden in the touch of death inside him.  
  
Then silence again, but for the working of his breath between chapped, bleeding lips as elder rotting body pulled back to look-~  
  
Sydney placed a hand on Hardin's shoulder and he jerked awake, cutting himself in the process. He cursed, raising a hand to his shoulder as the hot blood streamed. "Damn it, Sydney!"  
  
"Lea Monde is not a safe place to dream," Sydney said. "Dreams do not wish to let the dreamers go."  
  
Hardin hesitated, feeling a moment of ~terror. Where was the dancer of life in the dark fire of~ and he nodded, rising to his feet, forcing the dream away with the strength that he had used before to fight off other men. "Is it time for us to flee?"  
  
"No," Sydney said, tiny, terrifying smile lingering around his lips. "It is time for us to head farther into the dark, my Hardin. We will take the boy someplace safe, for now."  
  
It was pointless to ask why. Sydney had his plans, and Hardin would do his best to see Sydney through his plans and still protect Sydney.  
  
At least the child would be safe.  
  
Hardin raised Joshua in his arms and followed Sydney deeper into the catacombs. Perhaps it was from there that the stench of death had pervaded into his dreams, but more likely, it was Lea Monde itself.   
  
He averted his eyes as zombies rose as they passed and reached out hands trailing gobs of rotten, oozing flesh to brush against Sydney's skin. They did not reach for either himself or the child -- Sydney's doing, no doubt. A fragile safety, and yet Sydney seemed secure in it, head held high, seeming to almost enjoy the putrid touches. Sydney's eyes half-closed as a phantom reached out its ectoplasmic hand to brush over Sydney's chest, peaking nipples, and Hardin could not repress a shudder.  
  
/Would you fuck the dead, Sydney? Would they let you?/  
  
The sleeping child stirred, for a moment, in Hardin's arms.  
  
~Is there any other choice?~  
  
Hardin's head jerked up to see where the voice had come from, and saw nothing in the eyes of the dead but smug suffering, abated by the touch of Sydney's flesh.  
  
Finally, a stop. "Put the child down here, Hardin."  
  
Hardin did, arranging Joshua against the wall so he would be comfortable, at least, would perhaps sleep a touch better for not laying like the dead. He turned and saw Sydney watching him with considering eyes.  
  
He raised his own chin, challenging, though he was not certain what he would challenge.  
  
"Let me touch you," Sydney murmured, and Hardin was, as always, disarmed.  
  
"The boy, Sydney..."  
  
"He sleeps, Hardin. He sleeps on."  
  
~And he was himself again, heavy with lust but unable to make moves to change it, with claws in his shoulders and a cold weight bearing him gently to the ground and heavy-lidded blue eyes on his own. And he was hot, but he was motionless, limbs heavy as if they were not his own. And clothing was unfastened with the gentleness of a parent undressing their child and then Sydney's claws were raking down his chest. Hair pulled, blood sprang up, and he arched into the touch.  
  
He could die there, he could die.  
  
Sydney's mouth lowered to his chest, licked life-blood away like a nursing child, stirred responses like an artist mixing paint. He painted a red stripe of lust down Hardin's chest, and another stripe of suffering up.  
  
And still he was a doll, puppet, marionnette. His limbs moved, but he did not pull the strings. Sydney did, or perhaps the limbs had their own mind, disobedient or too-obedient body unable to avoid its own fate.  
  
Claws dug into his hips, danger, danger, danger, lust, and he moved as he was bade, let Sydney's cold flesh in.  
  
The claws were hooked into his flesh, tore more with every movement and yet he no longer felt it but as an abstract, as a knowledge that his flesh was torn, that his body lay like a body.  
  
He could not hear Sydney breathe over his own breathing, ripping like flesh in and out of his lungs. He was cold. He was cold.  
  
Sydney touched Hardin's legs and they spread wider, acknowledging their master and he was broken and he was bleeding and he was lost in a swirling red-hot painting. Panting, panting, he could smell the death of Lea Monde, taste the death of Lea Monde and Sydney's lips were soft on his.  
  
Soft on his while skin ripped like broken grimoire.  
  
Closer, closer.  
  
He opened his eyes, unable to help himself, hurting so deeply, pleased to be there, and watched the intense look on Sydney's face.  
  
Watched the eyelashes flutter like dying butterflies and rise, to reveal blue eyes, cold, dead.  
  
But not, Hardin saw as his own hips rose and fell with the frantic urge of instinct. Not. There was something in the depths of those blue eyes. A spark. Fire. Something inside the fire, dancing.  
  
He leaned closer, and--  
  
THERE.  
  
His head slammed back against the cobbles, helpless, breath signing out of him with no last words, and above him, eyes were distant again, cold and~  
  
He opened his eyes. Sydney was dressed again, as if he had never been undressed, and perhaps some healing had taken place because Hardin himself was untouched, was unblemished.  
  
Sydney knelt by the child, watching that unworried face.  
  
Blue eyes raised to meet Hardin's. "Are you awake?" Sydney asked.  
  
Hardin sat up, taking a deep, shuddering breath that reeked of the truth of Lea Monde, and he found himself unable to answer. 


End file.
